


Safe Travels

by Moraith



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Zack Fair Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24090223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moraith/pseuds/Moraith
Summary: The last leg of Zack's journey to Midgar in a world where he manages to miraculously evade Shinra's pursuit. He drags Cloud to Aerith's house, where he and Aerith finally reunite, however precarious things might be.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68





	Safe Travels

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a brief suicide threat. Stay safe, readers!
> 
> I, like so many others, whimsically played FFVII Remake despite not being a Final Fantasy fan and loved it so much I immediately _became_ a Final Fantasy fan. I went back and played the original FFVII and all its terrible spinoffs and now I'm chewing my way through the others in the series. Good stuff.

Cloud's feet dragged along the dirt path, occasionally catching on pebbles and sending them flying into Zack's legs. Zack imagined it as a deliberate protest against the dimming light and the long long journey not yet at its end. He adjusted his grip on Cloud's limp body, grunting with the effort. His arms burned, his legs felt like lead, and his shoulders were stiff and achy, but there was no time for complaints. 

"I know, buddy," he said, as a heavy clod of dirt caught on Cloud's boots and flew into his ankle. "It's been a long day. But hey, we're almost there!"

Zack smiled at a little girl in a mud-stained dress who stood staring on the side of the path. When he looked her way, she jumped and ran into the rusty shack behind her. A moment later, the thin ratty curtains covering the shack's single window parted to reveal a sliver of a small suspicious face. Zack laughed and turned his attention back to the road ahead of him.

"Slums are as friendly as ever, huh!"

He dragged himself, and Cloud along with him, down the familiar path, feeling the burning gazes of Sector 5's residents on his back. No one was on the street, but there were plenty of thin haggard faces hidden behind cracked doorways and darkened windows. He could hardly blame them for running and hiding when SOLDIER came to town. Still, he had to admit it stung to have been forgotten as Aerith's handsome plus one. Maybe he hadn't made much of an impression on them way back when. Maybe he wasn't recognizable after all these years; sometimes he didn't recognize himself, and these people didn't know him half as well.

With that momentary distraction, Zack's grip on Cloud slackened. He felt Cloud slipping and rushed to get him secure again. He winced from the effort. Aerith's house was so close now that he could practically taste it, but the exhaustion weighing down his body made it seem a lifetime away.

"Sorry, zoned out a little. I know I've been saying this whole time that we're almost there, we're almost there, but really this time! Aerith lives right down the road. You're gonna love her, trust me."

Cloud let out a soft wordless groan. He had been doing that from time to time ever since they escaped from the lab. Zack wasn't so much of an optimist that he believed Cloud understood him or was trying to speak, but getting a response felt good, like something he could hold on to. 

He passed by the last of the rusted crumbling buildings in the center of the Sector and emerged into the narrow green-lined path to Aerith's house. There were more flowers now than the last time Zack had visited. Even in the dusty barren alleys he had passed through on his way in, he had seen a few bits of greenery, scrubby little things pushing their way through cracked concrete, flowers in vases with long stems drinking up precious drops of clean water, scattered trampled-on petals on the ground in the empty lots he where remembered the children used to play. Aerith and her mother must have been hard at work all this time, slowly but surely injecting life back into Midgar. 

The thought made Zack's heart soar. The weary aches in his body seemed to fly away. He felt as though he could lift Cloud in his arms and sprint the rest of the way down the hill and into that familiar old safe haven. He tugged Cloud farther upright with half a mind to do exactly that: to break out running and laugh his way to victory. His muscles screaming in protest put a succinct stop to that fantasy, but the giddiness and relief bubbling up inside him only grew stronger.

Until the next moment, when there was hard metal pressed up against his back.

"You came here, of all places?"

Tseng's voice was as cold as the barrel of his gun. Zack suppressed a reflexive shudder at the metal digging into his spine. 

"I have to see her." He knew the Turks would never succumb to begging, but the words tumbled out of his mouth as though of their own volition. "Please let me see her. Just once. After everything, it can't end here."

Tseng jabbed his pistol harder into Zack's spine. Zack nearly lost his grip on Cloud when he flinched. He became more acutely aware than ever how weak he'd become. She was so close. He could see the house. All she needed to do was look out the window, step out the door, see him from the garden.

He wondered, dizzily, why Tseng hadn't taken the shot yet. Did he really think Zack could fight back? It couldn't have been pity, nor kindness. Maybe Hojo wanted them alive. Whatever the reason, he wasn't dead yet. He wanted to fight. He wanted to set Cloud down among the flowers and roll his shoulders and cut Tseng down. Before all this, it would've been the simplest thing in the world. To a 1st Class SOLDIER in their prime, even the leader of the Turks was no threat. Zack wasn't anything close to that. Not anymore.

With Tseng's gun at his back and Cloud dying in his arms, Zack grasped for the last thread of hope dangling in front of him. He screamed for Aerith. He screamed until his throat stung and his lungs were empty. Tseng shifted forward to clamp a gloved hand over Zack's mouth to muffle the wailing, but he moved too late. Aerith was out the door the moment she heard her name. 

She stormed up the hill toward Zack like an avenging angel, dressed in pink and red underneath a greasy old soot-stained apron, kitchen knife in hand. Zack, emboldened, bit down hard on Tseng's fingers, grinning all the while. Tseng tugged his hand away from Zack's face, but kept his gun firmly in place against Zack's spine. Zack gasped in a breath. He smiled crookedly at Aerith, starry-eyed and hopelessly in love.

"Hey, Aerith. I'm finally back."

Aerith grinned back at him, leaning in slightly so her bangs fell forward and framed her face perfectly. 

"You kept me waiting long enough!"

She brandished her knife playfully at Tseng. A bit of soggy lettuce stuck to the blade made the gesture more laughable than it already was.

"Hands off Zack, mister, before I take him from you!"

Tseng didn't move. He didn't speak for a long moment. Zack wondered if Tseng was gesturing, nodding, shaking his head, but he didn't dare turn to look. 

"Not this time, Aerith," Tseng said. "We need to get them back to Shinra. Orders are orders."

Aerith's playful cheer fled her. She withdrew her knife and picked the lettuce off with her fingernail, expression grim.

"Oh... wow, you're really serious this time. No room for argument, huh?"

She ran her finger along the knife's edge, gentle so she didn't draw blood. 

"Still pretty sharp..." she muttered.

She took a few steps backward toward the house without taking her eyes off the blade. Her heavy boots punctuated every step with an audible plodding. She flashed Tseng a venomous toothy grin and, with a slow, steady hand, raised the knife to her own throat. She tilted her chin back so the thin skin on her neck stretched taut. A droplet of red slithered down her skin. 

"I'm not in the mood for arguments either. Let them go or I die. No more Cetra. Ever."

Zack's breath caught in his throat. The sharp metal digging into his spine disappeared. He turned his head to look at Tseng and found his expression radiating weary resignation.

"You know you're being unreasonable. The army's coming. If you don't hand them over now, your mother will get caught in the crossfire."

"I'll figure something out," Aerith said coolly.

Tseng rolled his eyes. He held up his hands in surrender as a show of good faith, then turned and marched down the path into the slums. 

Aerith let the knife slip out of her grip and fall to the ground. She stuck her tongue out at Tseng's retreating back, then rushed toward Zack. She circled around to Cloud's other side and slung his limp arm over her shoulder, mimicking Zack's carrying technique. With another pair of hands on duty, Cloud's weight was barely noticeable. Zack beamed at Aerith past Cloud's shoulers. 

"Thanks for the rescue. I think I'm falling for you all over again."

"You're welcome. And you're not too bad yourself, big guy."

She shifted her grip on Cloud brushing her fingers against Zack's side as she did, as though to confirm he was really there.

"Where were you, Zack? Who is this? Are you... well, no. I should ask, how not-okay are you?"

"This is Cloud. Gonna have to think on the rest. Let's get him somewhere to sleep first, okay? He's not in a good way. I need to make sure he gets somewhere safe."

"Roger that."

Aerith and Zack began moving forward toward the door, taking small tentative steps until they adjusted into a comfortable rhythm. By the time they reached Aerith's doorstep, Zack's vision was blurring from exhaustion. He stood in front of that plain wooden door, the last obstacle between him and the end of his journey, and took one last bracing breath. The air here was clean and sweet, totally unlike the acrid fumes that hung around the rest of the slums like a persistent fog.

"Aerith, I love you," Zack said.

Aerith laughed. 

"Kind of a weird time to say that, don't you think?"

Zack smiled at the door.

"Just needed to let you know."

"Don't worry; I know. I love you, too."

Aerith pushed open the door. The two of them crossed the threshold, carrying Cloud with them. They both agreed, as they wrestled Cloud upstairs to the bedrooms, that it was a blessing that Elmyra was out visiting friends. It was hard to say how she would've reacted to Zack's return―she had never been much of a fan―but the comatose Cloud was an obvious no-go and Aerith putting a knife to her own throat would have been worth a lecture and a half, especially when she dropped their good knife in the dirt, and worse, left it there.

Navigating Cloud around the clutter in the hallway and guest room was a challenge, but aside from one upended box of dolls, they managed without casualties. They sat him down on the bed. Zack pulled off Cloud's shoes with practiced ease while Aerith rolled her shoulders and whined playfully about not being suited for heavy lifting. Zack guided Cloud into a proper lying position on the bed, then collapsed to his knees at Cloud's bedside, wracked with helpless desperate laughter.

"We finally made it, buddy!" He ran his fingers gently through Cloud's hair and laid his other hand over Cloud's. "No more walking. No more chocobo feathers in your mouth. No more trucks. You can just stay here and rest 'til you're back on your feet."

Cloud's head flopped to the side so his glassy eyes were looking through Zack's face. Zack smiled at him. Cloud didn't respond. Despite his best efforts, Zack's face fell. His relieved laughter devolved into weak sobs. Now that Cloud was here, the mission was over, and the weight of reality, the knowledge that he had to survive with all of Shinra on his tail, was too heavy to bear. He had never realized how deep the corruption ran. He had never realized how little he meant to them. He held Cloud's hand tight, pressed his face into the worn old quilt, and cried.

Aerith's arms wrapped around Zack's shaking shoulders. 

"It's been a long day, huh?" she murmured. 

They stayed like that until Elmyra returned home that evening, having found and picked up the kitchen knife Aerith left outside in the dirt. She scoured the house for her wayward daughter, the knife and several stern words at the ready. She found Aerith in the guest room on the floor with Zack. They were cry-laughing into each other's arms, making hushed conversation between sobs, so absorbed in each other that the rest of the world might as well not exist. Elmyra sighed, set the knife down on a nearby end table, and reminded herself it was not the worst way she had ever walked in on Zack and Aerith. 

Elmyra pried the two apart. When Zack could barely manage to get himself upright afterward, she sent him straight to bed in Aerith's room. Aerith followed her mother downstairs, almost as sheepish as she was overjoyed, and weathered the expected lecture about proper care of kitchen equipment with grace. The explanation of where Zack had come from and why he had a comatose friend with him were less simple. She shared what she knew, Cloud's name, that he and Zack had worked for Shinra together, and that they were off the job and on the run.

"We can ask him about it tomorrow. He'll be more on top of things then." Aerith wrung her hands in her lap. "...I hope. He was talking about Professor Hojo a lot. I think he might be doing worse than he's letting on."

"Of course it had to be Hojo," Elmyra sighed. With that revelation, any chance of kicking them out of the house went out the window, and she knew Aerith knew it. Aerith always knew how to get her way. "What happened to Zack's friend?"

"Cloud. He has mako poisoning. We just have to keep him away from materia and away from the reactors and hope for the best."

Elmyra looked at Aerith with disbelief. "Why did Zack bring him to _Midgar?_ "

Aerith shook her head. "...He wanted to see us."

"See _you._ "

"Mostly me. And he didn't have anywhere safe to leave Cloud. He was scared, Mom."

Elmyra sighed. There was more she could have said, but she and Aerith both knew how much of a danger it was to have Zack and Cloud here. They both knew it was a terrible idea that could get them both killed. They both knew neither of them would give up on it. She stood up and circled around the table to give Aerith a hug.

"Okay. That's enough for tonight. You go keep your boyfriend company. We'll pick it up in the morning."

Aerith wriggled out of Elmyra's arms so she could stand up, then hugged her mother properly. "Thanks, Mom. Will do." She stepped back, then began ascending the staircase. Halfway up, she leaned back down to add, "Don't peek! You won't like it!" 

Elmyra rolled her eyes. Aerith winked, giggled, then ran the rest of the way upstairs to get ready for bed. 

Once she had changed and made her way under the covers, Aerith held Zack in her arms and catalogued every detail of his face, from the scar on his cheek to the shape of his nose to the color of his lips. She smiled and pressed her forehead to his cheek. 

"Welcome home, Zack. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

Zack's only response was the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

**Author's Note:**

> We don't have ただいま／おかえり in English and that's a real tragedy, but we make do. Happy birthday, Cynthia! <3
> 
> (Emmett, before you make fun of me for writing Zack lives fanfiction, consider my oeuvre and then make fun of yourself for not seeing it coming a million miles away.)


End file.
